


A Not So Secret Secret

by Eightpoundsofhair



Category: The Secret Series - Pseudonymous Bosch
Genre: Coming Out, Highschool AU, Takes place like a 1-2 years after book 5, its for me exclusively, no one will read this and that's okay, yeehaw boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 22:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eightpoundsofhair/pseuds/Eightpoundsofhair
Summary: Cass knew it wouldn’t be an issue. She knew that no one would care. It was honestly obvious. Her, unruly, tomboyish Cass who broke up with her one and only boyfriend days after they started dating because it was ‘too weird’. It was transparently clear.Her mom was suspicious, asking with raised eye brows why she didn’t have a boyfriend. Her friends had to be suspicious, what with her seemingly total lack of interest in romance. There was gossip at school, although those occasional rumors about exclusively her were few and far between. Everyone was suspicious.So why was she so nervous?





	A Not So Secret Secret

**Author's Note:**

> The secret series was a pivotal part of my childhood and is the series that inspired me to write in the first place! I still adore it and when I needed a break from writing caffeine addict I decided to work on this :)

Cass knew it wouldn’t be an issue. She knew reasonably that no one would care. It was honestly obvious. Her, unruly, tomboyish Cass who broke up with her one and only boyfriend days after they started dating because it was ‘too weird’. It was transparently clear.

Her mom was suspicious, asking with raised eye brows why she didn’t have a boyfriend. Her friends had to be suspicious, what with her seemingly total lack of interest in romance. There was gossip at school, although those occasional rumors about exclusively her were few and far between. _Everyone_ was suspicious.

So why was she so nervous?

Perhaps it was the whole secrecy of it. Sure this wasn’t that big of a secret, it _certainly_ wasn’t the biggest one of those she’d ever had to deal with, but she had gotten quite good at keeping secrets over the past few years.

Maybe it was just that she had tried with boys before. It was painfully obvious going into high school how Yo-Yoji felt about her, the careful hand holding and constant attention had been weird but Cass thought she should reciprocate, thought it was what she was supposed to do even if she had no feelings for him, so she tried.

What would Yo-Yoji think now? Would he be insulted? It had been a long time now since that day three days after she had said yes to his nervous inquiry when she changed her mind on him and ended it. He had healed since then, had done so pretty quickly all things considered, but would this dig up old wounds?

Cass was not good at dealing with fights between friends. She took things too absolutely, assuming things were over for good when hurt feelings were involved. Surely this new revelation would be a disaster.

And what about Max-Ernest? He was more of a mystery than anyone else. Emotions and Max-Ernest were a complicated mix, quick to fizzle over and burst in Cass’s face if she wasn’t cautious. What would he think? What would he do?

He had been upset for that short period of time when her and Yo-Yoji had dated. Protective and antsy and altogether sending Cass into a spiral that helped in her ending things. He had acted so oddly, it almost seemed as if he liked her too but Cass couldn’t be sure about that, not when she had her suspicions that _he_ might be too.

And what about her mom? Sure her mom had never cared about the topic before. Heck, her stand-in grandfathers had been her idea after all, but what if?

What if it was different when it was her own daughter? What if this shoved another plank between them? One right next to that big fat one that simply started ‘adopted’ that Cass couldn’t quite find a way to remove without accidentally jamming it further in.

She held her hands in her head, groaning in frustration.

She knew nothing would be wrong with this. Nothing would happen and no one would mind.

For once she wished that she harbored some of Max-Ernest’s overly rational thinking to work herself down.

**

Cass decided to tackle this with Max-Ernest first. It felt right that way. Her first friend, first companion, and fully the one she was least certain about how they would react. If things went badly at least she would get the worst of the reactions over with first. So she went to him, shaking and nervous, first.

His house was as odd and unnerving as ever, sitting on the street corner in two drastically different collections of color and style but Cass was glad to see that the two, equally un-similar, cars were not parked on either end of the driveway. At least she could be alone with him for a little while.

He answered the door with his brother squirming in his arms, pulling at Max-Ernest’s already unruly hair harshly. The toddler whined all the while, fussy and seemingly unhappy to be held.

“Oh,” Max-Ernest spoke, eyes lighting from where they had only looked tired moments before, “Hi Cass! I didn’t know you were coming over,” he stepped into the house, allowing Cass to make her way inside.

“Sorry,” Cass muttered, eyes gravitating to the floor as her heart pattered quickly behind her chest, “I was hoping I could talk to you about something,”

“Sure,” Max-Ernest spoke, voice slow and careful, “Let me go put PC away,”

Cass nodded, following on shaky limbs as Max-Ernest lead the way up the stairs.

**

They sat on the edge of Max-Ernest’s bed in heavy silence. From the moment they had entered the room Cass had felt herself becoming consumed with worry, ultimately leaving her mouth closed tightly shut when Max-Ernest asked her what it was she wanted to talk to him about. She had tried to speak right away, tired to tell him what was so simple and easy, but found herself unable to even stutter a single syllable.

Cass groaned into her hands in frustration.

“Um,” Max-Ernest hummed, voice wavering and high, “Are you okay?”

Cass let out a heavy sigh, releasing her head from her hands and popping up from where she had been hunched over, leaning against his bedroom wall.

“Yeah,” she scoffed, looking down at her hands, “I’m just nervous,”

Max-Ernest scooted a little closer, “Is everything okay? Did the Midnight Sun do som-“

“No,” Cass cut him off sharply, interrupting him before he could fall into a long string of sentences, “I just need to tell you something,”

Silence floated through the room at that, heavy and pronounced with each quickly little thump of Cass’s heartbeat.

“What is it?” Max-Ernest asked after a moment.

Cass caught his eyes, staring into them for a long moment while she took a heavy breath, trying to ease her nerves and find the will to open her mouth and just say it.

It was impossibly hard to open her mouth though, to will herself to speak, but once she bit the bullet and forced herself to open her mouth she found the words, those two simple words, falling from her lips instantly.

“I’m gay,”

It was weird to hear it out loud. As much as she had known, as much as she had been confident in this conclusion from the moment it came to her, it was much different hearing it out loud than thinking it.

It was exciting. It felt right, felt good, and for a split second she was filled with bubbling happiness. Until she realized that Max-Ernest has not yet spoken yet. Then those nerves came back in full swing, became stronger, as she stared at him in nervous anticipation. It was unlike him to be quiet under any circumstance. His silence now, in such a pivotal moment, certainly wasn’t a good sign.

He eventually spoke, however, and Cass found herself sighing before she realized he hadn’t really said anything to alleviate her worries.

“Really?” was all her had said, voice soft and unsure of itself.

Cass nodded, heart pounding nervously against her ribs.

“Oh,” Max-Ernest spoke, the sound slow and calculated as his eyes quickly darted away, “How’d you know?”

Cass stared at him, nerves cooling somewhat yet not disappearing quite yet, “What’d you mean?”

“How’d you know?” Max-Ernest repeated, voice impossibly soft as he stared down at himself, “That you’re gay?”

“I don’t know. I just knew when the thought occurred to me that I might be,”

Max-Ernest hummed, nodding softly as his eyes slowly worked their way up to meet hers again, “I think I am, too,”

Cass laughed, “I guess we have more in common than we realized,”

**

Although Cass had certainly thought that Max-Ernest might not be so straight after all it was weird to have him talk about it. The feeling was mutual though, Max-Ernest had expressed his own suspicions about her and the odd sensation it was to hear her say it out loud in their following heart to heart.

And while the conversation was vaguely awkward, more than a little uncomfortable, and somewhat nerve racking, it was a positive one. One that she felt would only pull her and Max-Ernest closer together. Even though their perspectives and worries weren’t always the same they related to each other a lot more now.

Yet despite that, despite the comforting closeness, that pleasant openness, that had resulted in her telling Max-Ernest it had hardly filled her with the confidence she had hoped it would.

Max-Ernest has promised to keep this little tidbit a secret until she told him otherwise, he was the first person she had told after all, but still Cass felt that now that she had started she had to tell everyone else soon. Sure Max-Ernest would keep his mouth shut, just as she would keep her’s shut about him, but still. It felt wrong telling him and not telling anyone else.

She decided that night, when she tossed and turned in her bed worrying about how everyone else may react, that she had to tell her mom next. As much as she was worried about telling Yo-Yoji not having told her mom yet was already keeping her up at night in nervous anticipation. She wasn’t exactly nervous that things would go bad, Cass knew reasonably that her mother wouldn’t mind, but she felt a sense of urgency to tell her mother soon. What if she found out through someone else? She would certainly think Cass didn’t trust her and the conversation that would come from that would certainly be a disaster.

Cass wanted to tell her as soon as possible to avoid any chance of that.

Unfortunately she slept in due to her struggle to fall asleep, preventing her from telling her mom before she left for work as Cass had initially been hoping to do. So instead she spent the day working up her courage, mostly pacing around her room and running over the many many ways this could go wrong in her head. As much as she hated to admit it all this apocalypse training and natural disaster preparation probably had been inadvertently teaching her to worry more.

But it hardly mattered, not when that front door jingled in its door frame, her mom walking inside, her steps echoing in the house. Cass ran down the stairs as fast as she could at the sound, almost tripping on her way. Her mom stared startled up at her as she jumped down the last few steps, eyes wide.

“Well this is new,” her mother simply said, staring at Cass from the doorway.

Cass felt herself flushing, suddenly realizing just how abnormally she had been behaving.

“Are you alright?” Her mother asked, walking further into the house and shutting the door carefully, “You haven’t been this excited to see me come home since you were a toddler,”

Cass laughed awkwardly, rubbing at the back of her neck, grateful that at the very least her mother hadn’t commented on her quickly reddening ears, “I just wanted to tell you something,”

“And what would that be?”

“I’m gay,”

It was the complete opposite of yesterday. The words had slipped out before Cass could stop them, before she could even think them, and this wasn’t going as she had planned.

She had intended on sitting her mother down, working up her courage and at least waiting a few seconds for her to even set her purse down.

That didn’t matter though; the heavy silence that was quickly filling the room was all that she could really focus on. Staring intently at her mother’s face, which had warped in surprise, her heart rate drastically picked up.

Yet just as quickly as her mother’s face had lit up it fell, “Okay,” was all she said.

Cass was left dumbfounded as her mom walked away and into the house, the echoes of her steps the only sound in the house.

She stood frozen with confusion for a few moments, the lackluster response so unanticipated that she was left several beats behind, but finally she caught up and found herself chasing after her mother, who had placed her purse down on the dining room table.

“What the hell?” Cass yelled as she came rushing into the dining room.

“Cassandra!” Her mother called back as she entered, turning around to face her daughter with an angry look on her face, “Language!”

“Sorry,” Cass scoffed, voice dripping in sarcasm, “I just thought that you might be able to do better than ‘okay’”

“Well I don’t mind,” her mother explained, “What else is there to say?”

Cass let out a sigh, shaking her head as she tried to determine just what had made her so angry about the response in the first place, “I don’t know,” she threw her hands up, pulling over a chair to sit down on, “I just thought you’d might,” Cass waved her hands in front of her face “react a little,”

Her mother stared at her for a moment, “I’m sorry I didn’t say more,” she spoke slowly after a moment, words over articulated in a way Cass knew meant she was picking her words carefully, “Thank you for telling me,”

Cass rolled her eyes, “Whatever,”

Her mother scoffed a laugh, “I’ll let that one slide for now,”

**

Her mother eventually did have a more thorough talk with her later, although her reaction had hardly changed. Her mother simply didn’t care as long as she was happy and as much as that response had been anticlimactic, angering only because it was boring, Cass was relieved. She supposed a boring but ultimately positive response was better than a bad one.

So with a sigh of conflicting feelings she left the house and started on the short walk to Larry and Wayne’s.

Unsurprisingly they were hardly upset, reacting with nothing more than smiles and a few unexpected jokes which were only uncomfortable because Cass had never hear her grandfathers talk so openly about sexuality, especially hers. She couldn’t help but awkwardly chuckle at them though, even the one where Larry jokingly, at least Cass assumed, told Wayne that he owed him 10 dollars, they had supposedly been betting on when she would say something.

Cass made sure to tell her mom that her grandfathers had had a much better reaction than she did when she got home.

**

Cass had left Yo-Yoji for last of the people who explicitly needed to be told about the issue at hand for several reasons.

While she had no reason to believe he would reacted badly she also knew he had at one point been very invested in Cass’s romantic feelings and, although she didn’t like to think about this, likely still was.

Cass knew well by now that feelings could ruin things quite easily and she certainly felt that if anyone was going to respond negatively it would be him. They were friends, nothing more anymore and he knew this now, Cass had reminded him very kindly about this more than once shortly after they had broken up, but it was still apparent that he wished they were. At least Cass thought so, sometimes she worried she was just being conceited and that the many, _many_ , unfortunate rumors that their more popular peers liked to spread about them had been getting to her head. But Max-Ernest had seen it too. As much as Cass disliked it, it was still very likely that he did have feelings for her.

Maybe her telling him would help him? Give him some reasoning to her disinterest? Maybe it would finally manage to push the feelings away?

Cass just hoped it didn’t push _him_ away.

She loved him, even if it wasn’t in the way everyone thought it was.

**

Unlike how lucky Cass had been with Max-Ernest, Yo-Yoji’s entire family seemed to be home early afternoon the next day when she had arrived with shaky fists, wanting to talk to him.

His mother had opened the door, smiling sweetly down at her, a cheery, “Hi, Cass,” falling from her lips as Cass stepped inside, “I didn’t know you were coming over,”

Cass shook her head, glancing past her into the dining room where she could see Yo-Yoji’s younger siblings squabbling over something, although no Yo-Yoji himself.

“We didn’t have formal plans,” Cass spoke, still staring at the arguing siblings in the other room, “I was just hoping to talk to him,”

His mother hummed, “He’s up in his room,”

“Thanks,” Cass grumbled, kicking her shoes off before darting up the stairs to where she knew his bedroom was.

She gave the door a soft knock, her heart rate spiking with each tap of the wood. She head a soft groan come from inside, groggy and dragged as if he had just been sleeping, “Go away, mom,”

“Um,” Cass replied, head woozy as her chest filled with squeezing nerves, “It’s me, actually”

A soft “Oh,” came from the other side of the door, followed by a loud crash that startled Cass, causing her to jump away from the wood. When the door was opened Yo-Yoji smiled sheepishly at her, hair a mess atop his head, “What’s up?”

Cass forced a smile back, “Sorry for not telling you,”

He laughed awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck as he slowly opened the door wider for her to let her in, showing off the vast mess inside, “It’s okay,” he said slowly, “But next time give me at least enough warning to clear a path,”

Cass chuckled, although she could hear just how fake it sounded through her muddled nerves.

“I wanna tell you something,” Cass eventually spoke after a long pause of uncomfortable silence, words slow as she avoided Yo-Yoji’s eyes, although she could hear him sitting down at the end of his bed.

“What?” He asked quickly, voice raised where it normally would have been calm and cool.

Cass cringed at the sound, though she tried her best to hide the fact. This was going much more awkwardly than she had hoped it would.

“It’s nothing bad,” she promised, then hesitated, “Well actually I guess that depends on how you respond,”

With that she sat down next to him, bouncing softly from the force of it.

He chuckled awkwardly, “You’re freaking me out, dude,”

Cass sighed, “Sorry. I’m just nervous,”

He laughed, shoving her lightly with his shoulder, “I know. That’s _why_ you’re freaking me out,”

Cass shook her head and rolled her eyes, “Ha ha,” she spoke, voice low with sarcasm.

He hesitantly chuckled besides her and pulled his legs up to sit criss crossed, “But seriously, what’s up?”

Cass sighed again, heart pounding unpleasantly quickly behind her chest. One again she was cast into silence, her words not coming due to the sharp tension in her chest. This was horribly nerve racking, somehow more so than the other three times, and she found her lips unable to move. She forced her way through though, taking a shaky breath and avoiding his eyes.

“I’m gay,”

It was silent for a heavy moment, Yo-Yoji simply sitting at her side and breathing as they avoided each others eyes. Cass felt her heart rate pick up again, the uncomfortable silence mortifying and encompassing, before Yo-Yoji swallowed.

“Yeah?” He asked, raising his eyes to meet hers.

Cass nodded, “Yeah,”

Yo-Yoji simply stared for a minute, looking into her eyes for a long moment before he smiled.

“That makes sense,” he laughed for a moment before shoving Cass away from him sharply, startling her and nearly pushing her off of his bed entirely, “Way to lead me on,” he yelled, although laughter was in his voice and a smile still wide on his face.

“Hey!” Cass shouted, jumping back on to her feet and rushing over to push Yo-Yoji back. He jumped off the bed before she could though, jumping back and raising his hands in a mock fighting stance, “You’ll pay for that!” Cass joked, raising her voice in mock seriousness, although her tone was muddled by the smile that was planted firmly on her face.

“Only if you can catch me,” Yo-Yoji winked before running quickly out of his room.

Cass chased him down that stairs and outside onto the street, running until her lungs burned, laughing all the while.

**

Cass was unsurprised to find that she had been worrying about nothing. No one had minded and no friendships had been lost. In fact she actually felt a lot closer to her friends than before.

Max-Ernest and her had had a few more long talks about the topic until ultimately she helped him come out too, although admittedly she only helped with telling Yo-Yoji, to which he had only laughed and claimed that he had always known.

Her mom didn’t care, unsurprisingly, and while maybe her grandfathers’ new and plentiful jokes were embarrassing Cass thought she felt better around all of them. She wasn’t lying anymore, even if she never really had been before.

Even her and Yo-Yoji were closer, this unresolved tension about their brief and former romance, if you could even call it that, seemingly all but gone if not for a few sarcastic remarks from Yo-Yoji about how it only made sense, otherwise she would definitely be “madly in love” with him, but Cass couldn’t help but laugh all the while. They felt close again. No more awkward wondering and reminiscing.

She was happy. So much more so than she had realized she would be after this.

She was _gay_ , as Max-Ernest had put it, all too proud of himself, in more ways than one.

**Author's Note:**

> when I was twelve I has the BIGGEST crush on Cass I just didn't know it cause I didn't know I was gay. So I feel like this is a reflection of that. But like for real cass is gay and you cannot tell me otherwise  
> Anyways! If by some miracle someone else reads this PLEASE leave me a comment! And have a great day :)


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